Lidiya Aleksandrovna accidentally reads in the newspaper a note about her husband Sergey Pavlovich Snegiryov, who had been considered dead in the war. Her elder son Lenya goes to the city where the father lives and finds out that, having fallen in love with another woman, Sergey Pavlovich had been hiding from his family—he has had a different wife and a child for a long time. When Lenya returns home, he decides not to upset his mother and tells her that this Snegiryov is a completely different person—just someone with the same surname…